Chapter 5

Cloud Computing Architecture and

management

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 Cloud Architecture
• Any technological model consists of an architecture based on which the
model functions, which is a hierarchical view of describing the technology.
• The cloud also has an architecture that describes its working mechanism.
• It includes the dependencies on which it works and the components that
work over it.
• The cloud is a recent technology that is completely depen­dent on the
Internet for its functioning.
• Figure 5.1 depicts the architecture. The cloud architecture can be divided
into four layers based on the access of the cloud by the user.

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Cloud Architecture

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 Cloud Architecture
• Layer 1 (User/Client Layer)
• This layer is the lowest layer in the cloud architecture. All the users or client belong to
this layer. This is the place where the client/user initiates the connection to the cloud.
• The client can be any device such as a thin client, thick client, or mobile or any
handheld device that would support basic func­tionalities to access a web application.
• The thin client here refers to a device that is completely dependent on some other
system for its complete function­ality. In simple terms, they have very low processing
capability.
• Similarly, thick clients are general computers that have adequate processing
capability. They have sufficient capability for independent work. Usually, a cloud appli­
cation can be accessed in the same way as a web application.
• But internally, the properties of cloud applications are significantly different. Thus,
this layer consists of client devices.
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 Cloud Architecture
• Layer 2 (Network Layer)
• This layer allows the users to connect to the cloud. The whole cloud infra­
structure is dependent on this connection where the services are offered
to the customers. This is primarily the Internet in the case of a public
cloud.
• The public cloud usually exists in a specific location and the user would not
know the location as it is abstract. And, the public cloud can be accessed
all over the world. In the case of a private cloud, the connectivity may be
pro­vided by a local area network (LAN).
• Even in this case, the cloud completely depends on the network that is
used. Usually, when accessing the public or private cloud, the users require
minimum bandwidth, which is sometimes defined by the cloud providers
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Cloud Architecture
• Layer 3 (Cloud Management Layer)
• This layer consists of softwares that are used in managing the cloud. The soft­wares can be a cloud
operating system (OS), a software that acts as an interface between the data center (actual
resources) and the user, or a management soft­ware that allows managing resources.
• These softwares usually allow resource management (scheduling, provisioning, etc.), optimization
(server consolida­tion, storage workload consolidation), and internal cloud governance.
• This layer comes under the purview of SLAs, that is, the operations taking place in this layer would
affect the SLAs that are being decided upon between the users and the service providers.
• Layer 4 (Hardware Resource Layer)
• Layer 4 consists of provisions for actual hardware resources. Usually, in the case of a public cloud, a
data center is used in the back end. Similarly, in a private cloud, it can be a data center, which is a
huge collection of hardware resources interconnected to each other that is present in a specific
location or a high configuration system.
• This layer comes under the purview of SLAs. This is the most important layer that governs the SLAs.
This layer affects the SLAs most in the case of data centers. Whenever a user accesses the cloud, it
should be available to the users as quickly as possible and should be within the time that is defined
by the SLAs. 6
 Anatomy of the Cloud
• Cloud anatomy can be simply defined as the structure of the cloud.
Cloud anatomy cannot be considered the same as cloud architecture.
• It may not include any dependency on which or over which the
technology works, whereas architecture wholly defines and describes
the technology over which it is working.
• Architecture is a hierarchical structural view that defines the technology
as well as the technology over which it is dependent or/and the
technology that are dependent on it.
• Thus, anatomy can be con­sidered as a part of architecture.

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Anatomy of the Cloud

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 Anatomy of the Cloud
• There are basically five components of the cloud:
• 1. Application: The upper layer is the application layer. In this layer, any
applications are executed.
• 2. Platform: This component consists of platforms that are responsible for
the execution of the application. This platform is between the infrastructure
and the application.
• 3. Infrastructure: The infrastructure consists of resources over which the
other components work. This provides computational capability to the user.
• 4. Virtualization: Virtualization is the process of making logical com­ponents
of resources over the existing physical resources. The logical components
are isolated and independent, which form the infrastructure.
• 5. Physical hardware: The physical hardware is provided by server and
storage units. 9
 Network Connectivity in Cloud Computing
• Cloud computing is a technique of resource sharing where servers,
storage, and other computing infrastructure in multiple locations are
connected by networks.
• In the cloud, when an application is submitted for its execution, needy
and suitable resources are allocated from this collection of resources; as
these resources are connected via the Internet, the users get their
required results.
• For many cloud computing applications, network performance will be the
key issue to cloud computing performance.
• Since cloud computing has various deployment options, we now consider
the important aspects related to the cloud deployment models and their
accessibility from the viewpoint of network connectivity.
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Managing the Cloud
• Cloud management is aimed at efficiently managing the cloud so as to main­tain the QoS. It is one of
the prime jobs to be considered.
• The whole cloud is dependent on the way it is managed. Cloud management can be divided into two
parts:
1. Managing the infrastructure of the cloud
2. Managing the cloud application

• Managing the Cloud Infrastructure

• The infrastructure of the cloud is considered to be the backbone of the cloud. This component is
mainly responsible for the QoS factor. If the infrastruc­ture is not properly managed, then the whole
cloud can fail and QoS would be adversely affected.
• The core of cloud management is resource manage­ment. Resource management involves several
internal tasks such as resource scheduling, provisioning, and load balancing.
• These tasks are mainly man­aged by the cloud service provider’s core software capabilities such as the
cloud OS that is responsible for providing services to the cloud and that internally controls the cloud.
• A cloud infrastructure is a very complex sys­tem that consists of a lot of resources. These resources are
usually shared by several users.
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 Managing the Cloud
• Poor resource management may lead to several inefficiencies in terms of performance,
functionality, and cost. If a resource is not efficiently managed, the performance of the whole
system is affected.
• Performance is the most important aspect of the cloud, because everything in the cloud is
depen­dent on the SLAs and the SLAs can be satisfied only if performance is good.
• Lastly, the reason for which the cloud was developed was cost. The cost is a very important
criterion as far as the business prospects of the cloud are concerned.
• On the part of the service providers, if they incur less cost for managing the cloud, then they
would try to reduce the cost so as to get a strong user base.
• Hence, a lot of users would use the services, improving their profit margin. Similarly, if the cost
of resource management is high, then definitely the cost of accessing the resources would be
high and there is never a lossy business from any organization and so the service provider would
not bear the cost and hence the users have to pay more.
• Similarly, this would prove costly for service providers as they have a high chance of losing a
wide user base, leading to only a marginal growth in the industry.
• And, competing with its industry rivals would become a big issue. Hence, efficient management
with less cost is required. 12
 Managing the Cloud
• Managing the Cloud Application
• Business companies are increasingly looking to move or build their corpo­rate applications on cloud
platforms to improve agility or to meet dynamic requirements that exist in the globalization of businesses
and responsive­ness to market demands. But, this shift or moving the applications to the cloud environment
brings new complexities.
• Applications become more composite and complex, which requires leveraging not only capabilities like
storage and database offered by the cloud providers but also third-party SaaS capabilities like e-mail and
messaging.
• So, understanding the avail­ability of an application requires inspecting the infrastructure, the services it
consumes, and the upkeep of the application. The composite nature of cloud applications requires visibility
into all the services to determine the overall availability and uptime.
• Cloud application management is to address these issues and propose solutions to make it possible to have
insight into the application that runs in the cloud, as well as implement or enforce enterprise policies like
governance and auditing and environment management while the application is deployed in the cloud.
• These cloud-based monitoring and management services can collect a multitude of events, analyze them,
and identify critical information that requires additional remedial actions like adjusting capacity or
provisioning new services.
• Additionally, application management has to be supported with tools and processes required for managing
other environments that might coexist, enabling efficient operations. 13
Managing the Cloud
• Migrating Application to Cloud
• Cloud migration encompasses moving one or more enterprise applications and their IT environments
from the traditional hosting type to the cloud environment, either public, private, or hybrid.
• Cloud migration presents an opportunity to significantly reduce costs incurred on applications. This
activity comprises, of different phases like evaluation, migration strategy, prototyping, provisioning, and
testing.
• Phases of Cloud Migration
• 1. Evaluation: Evaluation is carried out for all the components like current infrastructure and application
architecture, environment in terms of compute, storage, monitoring, and management, SLAs, operational
processes, financial considerations, risk, security, com­pliance, and licensing needs are identified to build a
business case for moving to the cloud.
• 2. Migration strategy: Based on the evaluation, a migration strategy is drawn—a hotplug strategy is used
where the applications and their data and interface dependencies are isolated and these applications can
be operationalized all at once.
• A fusion strategy is used where the appli­cations can be partially migrated; but for a portion of it, there are
depen­dencies based on existing licenses, specialized server requirements like mainframes, or extensive
interconnections with other applications.
• 3. Prototyping: Migration activity is preceded by a prototyping activity to validate and ensure that a small
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Managing the Cloud
• 4. Provisioning: Premigration optimizations identified are implemented.
Cloud servers are provisioned for all the identified environments,
necessary platform softwares and applications are deployed, config­
urations are tuned to match the new environment sizing, and data­bases
and files are replicated.
• All internal and external integration points are properly configured. Web
services, batch jobs, and opera­tion and management software are set up
in the new environments.
• 5. Testing: Postmigration tests are conducted to ensure that migration
has been successful. Performance and load testing, failure and recov­ery
testing, and scale-out testing are conducted against the expected traffic
load and resource utilization levels.
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